Was Money Monster A Rental Well Spent?

This week we saw Money Monster, the new film from director Jodie Foster. The film seemed very topical with its themes of being led by the media and the greed of big corporations.

The film concerns a TV show called Money Monster, in which Lee Gates (George Clooney) advises his audience on how to invest their money, in particular stocks and shares.

His live show is interrupted by intruder Kyle Budwell (Jack O’Connell) who on one of Gates tips, has invested and lost his entire life savings on a company called IBIS.

He forces Gates to wear a vest full of explosives and will blow up the studio, unless he and IBIS CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West) give him answers. With the bomb set to go off if Kyle removes his finger from the detonator, the studio is forced to take notice!

The show, at his demand, is kept on air and the world tunes in. The show is overseen by its director, Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) as the drama unfolds.

The stock Kyle invested in dropped overnight due to what IBIS claim was a technical glitch, but the drop has cost investors over $800million.

Lee had planned to interview Camby about it on his show, but he sent his Communications officer Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe) instead, avoiding the situation, for reasons we will learn.

The studio therefore desperately try to get hold of Camby and investigate themselves to find out the real reasons behind the drop, as they learn a glitch in the algorithm would not have been able to wipe that much money off in one go, it had to be done by human error or worse!

We follow the story of what happened, as well as that of the law enforcement led by Captain Marcus Powell (Giancarlo Esposito) who want to use snipers to shoot Kyle, but will do so by shooting Lee first in a risky attempt to disarm the bomb.

The film offers some humour from the tense standoff, mainly provided by the show producer, Ron Sprecher (Christopher Denham) and the cameraman Lenny (Lenny Venito) as the real reason for the financial loss is discovered.

Now this film has taken some awful reviews from people who feel it is stupid. If however, you take it for what it is, A MOVIE, you should really enjoy it.

Yes there are issues, it does seem anyone can get into the studio easily enough, not just Kyle; Kyle’s girlfriend, when she gets to talk to him, is not cut off, when she appears to be flaming the fires of his anger and it does seem odd that the TV crew can find out the failing of the shares in under an hour, when no one even questioned it before.

However, Clooney and Roberts put in great performances in this film, in which is very topical. We have seen big corporations make decisions for its shareholders that would seem questionable (paying of tax is always one that comes up, so it is not unreasonable to think what happened in this film does happen, as Camby himself states, if profits are made does it get questioned?)

The question of are we being too influenced by TV is all so real too, have we bee persuaded in our voting from statements made? The film also does look at the part social media now plays to, from reactions to memes being created.

At just 98 minutes this is a great tense thriller from writers Jamie Linden; Alan DiFiore and Jim Kouf. Jodie Foster directs the film very well too, in a change from her smaller films such as The Beaver and Little Man Tate, clearly taking the lessons learned from directing on shows such as House of Cards.

If you are looking for an engaging thriller with an on topic storyline, we think Money Monster is well worth your time .